FNC: Two directors, two fortes

T'Cha Dunlevy, GAZETTE FILM CRITIC10.07.2013

Robert Lepage, left, and Pedro Pires invented their own film language in Triptyque, in which three characters, each experiencing turmoil, struggle to express themselves. The movie opens the Festival du nouveau cinéma on Wednesday, Oct. 9.Seville

A schizophrenic woman (Lise Castonguay) is released from a hospital into the care of her sister in Triptyque.Seville

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MONTREAL - Pedro Pires and Robert Lepage are from different worlds. But after years of friendship and collaborating on each other’s projects, the two have finally made a feature film together as co-directors.

Triptyque premièred last month at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), is the opening film of the Festival du nouveau cinéma (FNC) on Wednesday, Oct. 9, and will be released in theatres on Oct. 25.

Inspired by Lepage’s play Lipsynch, the visually rich, conceptually complex film explores the relationship between the brain, language and thought from the points of view of three interconnected characters. For its creators, the project involved a coming together of their respective specialties.

“We work in a very complementary way,” said Pires, whose 2009 film Danse macabre (made in collaboration with Lepage and AnneBruce Falconer) won awards worldwide, including best Canadian short at TIFF and best short film at the FNC, and whose 2011 short Hope also screened at both festivals. Pires has lent his visual expertise to various Lepage projects, including the 2010 Cirque du Soleil show Totem (as “image content designer”) and the 2000 film Possible Worlds (as “visual designer”).

“I can take the script and spend a couple of days thinking about what we have to remove and blah, blah, blah,” Pires continued. “Then we meet, shoot, edit, reshoot. It’s a very non-linear process, sometimes together, sometimes I’m alone and I ship images to Robert. It’s very free and friendly.”

“I’m more from the theatre world, but I have filmmaking intentions or pretensions,” said Lepage, the internationally known playwright, stage and film director, and actor.

“What’s interesting, if you want a play to have some kind of (cinematic) life, is to put it through the meat grinder of Pedro. He just knows: ‘This character has to shut up.’ In film, one image is worth 1,000 words. In theatre, one word is worth 1,000 images; it’s a very talkative art form.”

The two friends are not afraid to question each other’s ideas. There is a lot of back-and-forth in their partnership, and the result is a different kind of cinema, with distinct theatrical elements ensconced in a more purely visual world.

“Pedro doesn’t stifle me, but he says, ‘Why not shoot it this way? (That character) doesn’t need to say that, or explain this,’ ” Lepage said, emphasizing that he has no problem deferring to Pires in such moments. “I don’t have any intention of being recognized as a filmmaker. I enjoy the process, and I do other stuff as a living.”

Triptyque tells the story of Michelle (Lise Castonguay), a schizophrenic woman released from a hospital into the care of her sister, Marie (Frédérike Bédard), who has recently recovered from brain surgery and begun a relationship with her surgeon, Thomas (Hans Piesbergen). Each character, experiencing personal turmoil, struggles to express themselves through the imperfect medium of language.

“That’s why it’s a Quebec film,” Lepage said, “in the sense of this whole identity crisis of Quebec, which has been going on for a long time. It’s intimately connected to language — not just a French-English thing.

“Claude Gauvreau, the poet that Michelle quotes, developed this language called Exploréen. He wrote in French but felt that language imprisons the mind, it doesn’t liberate it. So to liberate yourself, you have to invent your own language.”

Lepage and Pires invent their own film language in Triptyque — a dreamy, surreal style of cinema rooted in tangible human emotions, able to explore themes of consciousness and memory, and even comment on the dire state of our city streets.

“Pedro had this idea of (showing) construction cones all over Montreal, a city being cracked open,” Lepage said, “like this character (Marie) who has just had her head cracked open. That can only be brought in by somebody like Pedro, who works in film metaphor.

“I’m more concerned with the other side of the concept — dramaturgy and construction. For example, when we edit, I would say, ‘OK, I know what structure the movie has,’ and I go, ‘Rah, rah, rah,’ and f--- around with the structure, because that’s what I do in my plays. It’s one of my strengths — structure, storytelling in a filmic way.”

Triptyque screens Wednesday, Oct. 9 at 7 p.m. at the Imperial Cinema, 1430 Bleury St., as the opening film (by invitation) of the Festival du nouveau cinéma, and Oct. 19 at 5 p.m. at Excentris, 3536 St-Laurent Blvd., also as part of the festival. The film opens in theatres on Oct. 25. For more information, visit nouveaucinema.ca.

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